New Delhi: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd may spend about USD 12-15 billion over the next few years on AI infrastructure that could include a giant 1GW data centre, Morgan Stanley said in a report.
Ambani had at the company's annual shareholder meeting in August announced a major push into AI through a new subsidiary and strategic partnerships.
A new wholly-owned subsidiary, Reliance Intelligence will spearhead the conglomerate's AI initiatives that will be centered around four pillars -- Infrastructure (building gigawatt-scale, AI-ready data centers), Partnerships (collaborating with global tech leaders to bring cutting-edge AI solutions to India), Services (developing AI-powered services tailored for Indian consumers, small businesses, and enterprises in sectors like education, healthcare, and agriculture) and Talent (investing in upskilling and nurturing India's AI workforce).
Reliance has re-invented itself every decade, and AI is set to reshape its equity story, Morgan Stanley said in the report.
Gen AI deployment enables large-scale capital deployment while unlocking value through synergies across energy, digital, consumer, and media verticals.
"We estimate that Reliance will spend approximately USD 12-15 billion on AI infrastructure to develop a 1GW datacenter, underwriting about 25 per cent of the capacity itself (roughly USD 7 billion for datacenter infrastructure and USD 5 billion for the 250MW of chips the company will deploy directly)," it said.
It is expected that the remaining capacity will be leased to hyperscalers and LLM providers as 'Datacenter as a Service'.
The first phase of the data centre is already underway in Jamnagar, Gujarat.
"We believe Reliance can utilize its initial 100MW of Gen AI datacenter capacity - which it has indicated will scale up over two years - to address inference demand from enterprises, as part of its enterprise stack offering and Sovereign AI initiatives," it said. "This effort will leverage its joint venture with Meta on small language models, as well as partnerships with Google and Azure."
Reliance on Saturday announced a dedicated AI joint venture with Meta's subsidiary, Facebook Overseas, Inc, named Reliance Enterprise Intelligence Ltd (REIL). The partners have committed an initial investment of Rs 855 crore, with Reliance Intelligence holding a 70 per cent stake and Facebook Overseas holding 30 per cent.
The venture will combine Meta's open-source Llama AI models with Reliance's business network to create and distribute enterprise AI services for Indian companies.
Reliance is also collaborating with Google to establish a dedicated cloud region in Jamnagar, combining Reliance's infrastructure capabilities with Google's AI and cloud technologies.
Morgan Stanley saw an ROCE of about 11 per cent on the initial AI investments. For 'Datacenter as a Service', it estimated annual revenues of around USD 1.5-1.6 million per MW.
"Given data centers are significant energy consumers, Reliance can also underwrite more than 20GW of internal power demand, supporting 100GW of its solar panel capacity and 30-40GWh of its own battery capacity," it added.